Fast And Precise Face Alignment And 3d Shape Reconstruction From A Single 2d Image

Many face recognition applications require a precise 3D reconstruction of the shape of the face, even when only a single 2D image is available. We present a novel regression approach that learns to detect facial landmark points and estimate their 3D shape rapidly and accurately from a single face image. The main idea is to regress a function f(.) that maps 2D images of faces to their corresponding 3D shape from a large number of sample face images under varying pose, illumination, identity and expression. To model the non-linearity of this function, we use a deep neural network and demonstrate how it can be efficiently trained using a large number of samples. During testing, our algorithm runs at more than 30 frames/s on an i7 desktop. This algorithm was the top 2 performer in the 3DFAW Challenge.